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LT04 Defective Tapes

Has anyone noticed a significant defective percentage in the number of LT04 tapes that they use? We have ordered two 30+ LTO4 tapes from two different suppliers and seem to have a defective rate of about 13%. This is higher than the number of defective tapes that we get with our LTO3 tapes. I have opened PMR's with IBM support to confirm that it was not the tape drives or TSM. Just wanted to see what the general consensus is.

Do you agree with IBM on this?
I haven't had any tests on LTO-4, only LTO-2 and due to the fact that you could not guarantee that either Fuji or Maxell branded cassettes contained their respective tape/chip we opted for Imation (as they only put their own tape into their cassettes).

My migration plan is based upon Imation so am interested to see anything that would suggest otherwise.

I'm using the TS3200 tape library and I have experienced the same problems with LTO4 tapes. I've tried dfferent tape brands but there was no difference. About a mounth ago IBM released new firmware for the library and the tape drives. After upgrading the firmware I havn't had any read or write errors.

Looks like my issue might be a drive. Seems to occur on one specific drive. Thanks for the replies.

Click to expand...

Makes a little more sense that way doesn't it?
When i do get an error on a tape, i take note of the drive it happened on, just to make sure that if i do get another error that same day or sometime soon after, it isn't the same drive...
If it is, i usually don't mess around too much and get a replacement from IBM...